Eric Finley
First Post
I'm working on a set of ~28mm figurines for my D&D group right now. Blender is definitely a good pick, although you'll have trouble with humanoid figures until you get much better than a beginner. Right now I'm importing things from DAZ Studio (a Poser-lite program which uses premade models - of which it has many - and morphs to get them exactly how you want) and Spore (for my Dragonborn, mostly). Once MakeHuman reaches the point where it can export posable models, it'll be a good pick too (and also free). There are also a number of free or cheap 3D models available in various places if you know where to look.
All of these methods are tricky, often very tricky, because of the watertight-and-manifold mesh requirement for Shapeways. But doable. Once I get my prints back I'm going to be compiling a list of tricks and methods for people who want to do the same thing. There's actually an article on Shapeways' blog (link here) about the work, and I'm very eager to see how things turn out.
I'm also considering offering a service which will do the conversion process and handle the printing issues. I'll have to do a couple more runs of my own stuff before I'm really comfortable doing so... but I'm curious; how many folks would pay, say, $30-40 for a totally custom mini for their D&D character? (That's assuming that you pick up, e.g., DAZ Studio and do the initial 3D model yourself; more if all you give me is a description and I have to do the initial modelling for you.) Pricing is very tentative, of course - I'm still shaking the bugs out doing it for my own players, and if it never gets quicker then I'd have to charge much more than that to even make minimum wage (and I make a LOT more than minimum wage at my day job!). But that's where I'd like to be able to get it to.
All of these methods are tricky, often very tricky, because of the watertight-and-manifold mesh requirement for Shapeways. But doable. Once I get my prints back I'm going to be compiling a list of tricks and methods for people who want to do the same thing. There's actually an article on Shapeways' blog (link here) about the work, and I'm very eager to see how things turn out.
I'm also considering offering a service which will do the conversion process and handle the printing issues. I'll have to do a couple more runs of my own stuff before I'm really comfortable doing so... but I'm curious; how many folks would pay, say, $30-40 for a totally custom mini for their D&D character? (That's assuming that you pick up, e.g., DAZ Studio and do the initial 3D model yourself; more if all you give me is a description and I have to do the initial modelling for you.) Pricing is very tentative, of course - I'm still shaking the bugs out doing it for my own players, and if it never gets quicker then I'd have to charge much more than that to even make minimum wage (and I make a LOT more than minimum wage at my day job!). But that's where I'd like to be able to get it to.
